“Did I?” said Fred, reddening instantaneously.  He was alarmed, but at a loss to know what Mrs. Garth meant, and added, in an apologetic tone, “Mr. Farebrother has always been such a friend of ours; and Mary, I knew, would listen to him gravely; and he took it on himself quite readily.”

“Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes, and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others,” said Mrs. Garth She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of her worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.

“I cannot conceive how it could be any pain to Mr. Farebrother,” said Fred, who nevertheless felt that surprising conceptions were beginning to form themselves.

“Precisely; you cannot conceive,” said Mrs. Garth, cutting her words as neatly as possible.

For a moment Fred looked at the horizon with a dismayed anxiety, and then turning with a quick movement said almost sharply—­

“Do you mean to say, Mrs. Garth, that Mr. Farebrother is in love with Mary?”

“And if it were so, Fred, I think you are the last person who ought to be surprised,” returned Mrs. Garth, laying her knitting down beside her and folding her arms.  It was an unwonted sign of emotion in her that she should put her work out of her hands.  In fact her feelings were divided between the satisfaction of giving Fred his discipline and the sense of having gone a little too far.  Fred took his hat and stick and rose quickly.

“Then you think I am standing in his way, and in Mary’s too?” he said, in a tone which seemed to demand an answer.

Mrs. Garth could not speak immediately.  She had brought herself into the unpleasant position of being called on to say what she really felt, yet what she knew there were strong reasons for concealing.  And to her the consciousness of having exceeded in words was peculiarly mortifying.  Besides, Fred had given out unexpected electricity, and he now added, “Mr. Garth seemed pleased that Mary should be attached to me.  He could not have known anything of this.”

Mrs. Garth felt a severe twinge at this mention of her husband, the fear that Caleb might think her in the wrong not being easily endurable.  She answered, wanting to check unintended consequences—­

“I spoke from inference only.  I am not aware that Mary knows anything of the matter.”

But she hesitated to beg that he would keep entire silence on a subject which she had herself unnecessarily mentioned, not being used to stoop in that way; and while she was hesitating there was already a rush of unintended consequences under the apple-tree where the tea-things stood.  Ben, bouncing across the grass with Brownie at his heels, and seeing the kitten dragging the knitting by a lengthening line of wool, shouted and clapped his hands; Brownie barked, the kitten, desperate, jumped on the tea-table and upset